Criticism Of Henry Fayol's Functional Approach To Management

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Management
Management is vital for any organisations regardless of the size and the types of the organisations. In general, management is defined as “the application of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling functions in the most efficient manner possible to accomplish meaningful organizational objectives.” (John M. Ivancevish and Thomas N. Duening, 2007)
Fayolism
Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer and director of mines in the 1880s, came up a management idea known as Fayolism. Fayol identified managerial activities as “concerned with drawing up the broad plan of operations of the business, with assembling personnel, co-ordinating and harmonising effort and activity” (Fayol, 1949) . Fayol emphasizes the important on …show more content…

First of all, they criticise that Fayol’s theory is too formal to the extent of it can hardly be applied to informal organisations. His theory is too rigid and it will only shows its effectiveness in formal organisation structure.
Secondly, his Functional Theory too management oriented and often neglect the wellbeing of the workers. Workers often treated as a mechanical tools which their only concern is how to follow orders. Many modern management views have criticised on this point as they pin-point that workers are humans and they do require freedom to take part in decision making. It will be impossible to control workers’ movements entirely.
Other than that, modern management view too criticise that Functional Theory is only effective during the time of stable and predictable environment. In today’s chaotic environment, managers have to consider democracy as one of the management element. Managers have to be more careful on human behaviour and when necessary provides motivations and persuasion in order to get the work …show more content…

Both Mintzberg and Fayol agrees that every objectives start with planning. Fayol’s planning function is undeniable as it is common thing all managers have to do beforehand to build a successful path. Out of ten roles that Mintzberg stated, there is 5 roles which have the similar meaning with Fayol’s planning function.
Besides, in his “folklore” article, Mintzberg mentioned that every managers have to spend a huge amount of time to deal with high pressure of disturbance. (Mintzberg, 1975) For instances, most of the time mangers do not only focus on his personal paperworks but he also need to deal with unexpected phone calls and sometimes he also need to deal with subordinates who walk into his room for discussion. Hence, managers have the obligation to act as disturbance handler. However, Mintzberg’s statements sounds kind of similar to what Fayol’s control and coordination function.
Other than that, Mintzberg also cannot fully deny the existence of organising function in management. Most theorists have acknowledged the importance of organising and defined it as a crucial element when come to managing an organisation. Among the 10 roles of Mintzberg’s suggestions, Leader and Resource Allocator are the most solid evidences that Mintzberg also agreed Fayol’s organising

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